Musical Stillness Moves

Roman Hurko rattles off the names of liturgical composers
who have influenced his work. Arvo Pärt. John Taverner. Henryk Gorecki.

Not exactly household names, these, but one gets the sense
that, to Hurko, the three (an Estonian, a Brit and a Pole) are as familiar as,
well, family.

What he admires about their music is the sense of
“introversion and stillness” it conveys. That effect, he finds, matches the
iconography of the Eastern Church, which, he explains, is two dimensional and
“doesn’t come out to you,” like statues in a Western church. “It draws you in.”
The music is meditative, he says, and has the effect of “slowing you down,
centering you, giving you space to breathe and pray.”

Hurko, 45, a Ukrainian Catholic composer, strives to elicit
a similar response from his own liturgical music — two settings of the Divine
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, a requiem for the victims of the 1986 nuclear
power-plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, and his new CD, “Vespers.”

He spoke with Register news editor John Burger.

I’ve been listening to
your music. To compose works like these, you must be deeply immersed in the
Ukrainian Catholic tradition.

Both my parents came from western Ukraine. I was a late
child. My mom is 83 and my father, if he were alive, would be 93. So they
really come from another era, another time. They retained the traditions they
grew up with in the 1920s and ’30s.

When they got married and started a family and a home, they
tried to recreate what they knew.

Even though I was born and raised in Toronto, the home was
very Ukrainian. Every time I came home, Ukrainian was heard — Ukrainian
traditions, Ukrainian food.

How did music enter
your life?

Something I’ve always loved. My mom is always singing and
knows a thousand songs, at least. So I’ve got a lot of the Ukrainian folk melos
(the style of singing) in my ear.

On top of that, going to church on Sundays, hearing a chant
from western Ukraine, as well as choral singing of the great Eastern tradition
— that all that got mixed up in my idea of music, and that’s what I draw on in
my composition.

Did you formally study
music?

My first degree was a bachelor’s of music history and theory
at the University of Toronto. But it didn’t go in that direction. I worked in
opera (stage direction) for my first career.

And at the same time I was doing music and started a choir
at my church. I started writing music for the choir, since I had an instrument
to work with.

It was my little laboratory. I’d bring something in, they’d
sing and I’d hear. I saw what worked, what didn’t work. On top of that, I’d
sung in choirs all my life, so I had an idea as a performer but not as a
writer.

What are you trying to
do with your music?

I’m trying to match the iconography, match the vestments,
match the incense. I’m just trying to match with the music. Maybe that comes
from my opera directing, that everything should fit. It should be a complete,
you know, the music should match the building, what you hear should match what
you see and what you smell.

That’s all I was trying to do and, when my second Liturgy
had its premiere in Kiev, at St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery, I was very
pleased that it did not feel out of place in this 11th-century church.

I’m trying to write music for the church and not for the
concert hall. This is music that any slightly-better-than-average choir should
be able to perform. The text is very much understood because I’m writing
homophonically, which is chord, chord, chord, usually, with very little
counterpoint, except where people would understand the words or in an Alleluia,
perhaps.

Also, trying to create music that calms one, that centers
one, as opposed to music that excites you.

I’ve been looking into this idea of hesychasm. Hesychasm
means stillness. There were Greek monks who would achieve this sort of still
state through repetitions of the Jesus Prayer. This stillness is very
important, that a person can forget the outside world when they’re in church
and forget all the turbulence that’s going on and just center themselves.

The Cherubic Prayer says at the end, “Let us put aside all
worldly cares.” I’m hoping that the music can help in that process in putting
the world outside and calming down, focusing, centering.

You have some of your
music on YouTube. Are these sacred “music videos?”

Yes, they’re kind of like sacred-music MTV. Someone told me
that people don’t listen to music anymore; they watch it. Especially kids, I
guess. They watch their MTV or go to concerts, and so it’s a very visual
experience for them.

My website is set up so people can order or download CDs,
and I see who orders them, and I was shocked once that a soldier in Fort Bragg,
Ala., orders one of my CDs. And I was thinking, “What is an American soldier
called Miller doing downloading one of my Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic CDs?”

But you never know who it’s going to touch — some soldier in
Alabama, someone across the world somewhere. And … let it be out there. Let it
do its work.

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